Defending champions, Western Province (WP), will take on 2012 champions, Northerns, in the semi-final of the Cricket South Africa (CSA) Women’s Provincial League in Cape Town on Saturday. This will be the second consecutive year that the sides meet at this stage of the competition. Last year, Western Province were the victors in Cape Town. WP captain, Alexis le Breton, is looking forward to a competitive match against one of the strongest sides in the country. She believes that Northerns will put up a better fight than they did the previous year. “We can’t rely on what happened last year,” she said. “A whole year has passed since then and both our sides have experienced some changes. We’ve prepared really well for this match so far, obviously with them (Northerns) being one of the toughest sides in the competition, we want to bring our A-game when we meet on Saturday.” Le Breton is confident her side have done what is needed to produce the goods once again. “We’re confident in our ability to play our natural game. We haven’t done anything extraordinary in preparation for the match, we’ve just kept to our winning formula and focussed primarily on ourselves,” she continued. When asked whether they will be targeting any individuals in the opposition Le Breton said; “We tend to look more to ourselves rather than the opposition, that’s how we’ve gotten ourselves this far. We have a great coach in Cobus (Roodt), who has really toughened us up mentally and we are ready to take on whatever comes our way come Saturday.” The visitors have not had a lot of outdoor practice time with all the rain that has been falling on the Highveld, but captain Mignon du Preez is cautiously optimistic about her side’s chances. “The weather hasn’t been good to us lately so all of our preparation has been indoors but we’ve done all that we can do to make sure we are at our peak on Saturday,” she commented. “It’s going to be a very interesting match, we have some new faces that are eager to prove themselves and there’s no better time and place to do it than in the semi-finals. “I believe that WP will be under more pressure than us because they have a title to defend and more to lose, so we’ll just control what we can control and get on with business when we get to Cape Town,” Du Preez concluded. In the second semi-final match, KwaZulu-Natal will host Gauteng in Durban. Both sides are on top of their respective logs.